-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A vivid historical novel about Jane Austen that explores a question that has fascinated Janeites for years—Austen wrote some of the greatest love stories in existence, but did she ever fall in love?
When Jane Austen hears the news that her family is to leave their beloved country home for the city of Bath, she faints with surprise and horror. But there is one compensation: the promise of a six-week holiday by the sea while their new lodgings are being prepared. She relishes the bracing air and beautiful surroundings, takes pleasure in sea bathing, and shares laughter with her sister Cassandra and best friend Martha Lloyd.
To her joy, brother Frank arrives, fresh from naval exploits in the war against Napoleon. His friend Captain Parker seems to be making a play for Jane's affections, but her sharp emotional intelligence tells her that something is not quite right. Meanwhile, she assists the eccentric Reverend Swete in finding a home for his bi-racial granddaughter who has arrived from the West Indies.
Jane initially takes against another visitor to the seaside resort of Sidmouth, the lawyer Samuel Rose, but as she gets to know him, a wholly different feeling begins to blossom....
Written with a same wit and style that echos Austen herself, Paula Byrne expertly interweaves her deep knowledge of Austen and her world to imagine and give voice to the most romantic summer of the beloved author's short life.
"Offering deeper insights into relationships, including Jane's much-speculated-on romantic connections, amid quiet moments of domestic life, Six Weeks by the Sea is an appropriately Austenesque novel of manners. Addressing serious social issues as seen through period-appropriate perspectives may provide modern readers new understanding of Jane Austen and her world." —Booklist (starred review)
"The Jane Austen beach book fans have been waiting for." —Kirkus Reviews
"Byrne breathes yet more life into Austen and her works by considering the objects that populated her days. The thematic approach offers a revealing picture of Austen and a lively social history and paints a fresh and vivid picture of an inimitable woman." —The Economist
"Brilliantly illuminating. Riveting. Again and again, Byrne opens out Austen's story with a novelist's persistent probing of the evidence." —The Guardian
This information about Six Weeks by the Sea was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paula Byrne is the critically acclaimed author of five biographies, including Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice, The Real Jane Austen, The Genius of Jane Austen, and Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead. She lives in New York City with her husband, the academic and biographer Jonathan Bate.
If you liked Six Weeks by the Sea, try these:
by Ann Packer
Published 2026
The bestselling, beloved author returns with her first novel in over a decade, an intimate and profoundly moving look at a long marriage and the ways in which a startling request can change a couple's understanding of who they are, together and apart.
by Madeline Bell
Published 2025
Two feuding co-stars in a Jane Austen film adaptation accidentally travel back in time to the Regency Era in this delightfully clever and riotously funny debut.
by Gill Hornby
Published 2021
For fans of Jo Baker's Longbourn, a witty, poignant novel about Cassandra Austen and her famous sister, Jane.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
